Philippines News

A group opposed to the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) has said the Supreme Court decision upholding the secrecy of the negotiations on the said deal will set a dangerous precedent on future economic pacts that the Philippines will enter into.

In a statement, the No Deal! JPEPA said that the Supreme Court, with its decision on the trade deal, legitimizing the marginalization of ordinary Filipinos from having access to pertinent information on economic treaties such as the JPEPA that will have a deep impact on their interest and livelihood.

"This will embolden the executive branch to enter into more trade and investment agreements and make commitments without due regard to their harsh effects on various sectors, especially the poor and marginalized," No Deal! JPEPA said. "Trends indicate that bilateral trade and investment agreements are on the rise in recent years, with the Philippines having pending negotiations with the European Union, the U.S., China and others aside from its economic deal with Japan."

The coalition also hit executive secretary Eduardo Ermita's statement that international agreements "should be handled with care" and with "confidentiality."

Malacañang will not hesitate to again invoke “executive privilege” once the Senate investigates the Northrail project.

Deputy presidential spokesperson Lorelei Fajardo said the Senate is free to reopen its inquiry into the controversial project as a co-equal branch of government.

The executive will exercise its right to protect the national interest, she added. The Supreme Court has ruled that there are some matters that the President cannot divulge to the public under the principle of executive privilege.

Fajardo said the administration will look into the allegations of overpricing in the project, which aims to link Metro Manila with the Clark Special Economic Zone via a train network.

MANILA, Philippines -- Militants protested in front of the Social Security System building in Quezon City Friday against the government’s national social welfare program for the poor, a radio report said.

They also protested the takeover of Commission on Higher Education chairman Romulo Neri as head of SSS in August.

Neri, who was former socioeconomic planning secretary of the National Economic Development Authority, has been criticized for refusing to implicate President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the allegedly anomalous national broadband network (NBN) agreement forged with a Chinese telecommunications firm.

MANILA, Philippines—You don’t have to be a financial wizard to know that you cannot go far in business with P62,500. That kind of money may be enough to stock up a small “sari-sari” store [neighborhood variety store], but it cannot pay even one month’s rental for a tiny office in Makati. But it seems some people have the colossal good luck to hit the big time in no time at all and with so little money.

Transpacific Consolidated Resources Inc. (TCRI) is one such extremely lucky company. Registered in the Cebu office of the Securities and Exchange Commission in October 2007 with paid-up capital of only P62,500, it was awarded four months later a P956-million contract for the supply of coal by the National Power Corp. (Napocor). How it won, with virtually “laway lang ang capital” [literally, “only saliva for capital”], is a mystery that Napocor has to explain satisfactorily.

SINGAPORE -- Filipino faces are already commonly seen delivering frontline service in restaurants, clubs, and bars here, but they are now popping up in a new arena—the coffee shops.

Most are serving drinks and clearing tables, but they come a lot more qualified than their foreigner counterparts doing the same job on work permits. The Filipinos are here on S-passes, typically granted to those with at least a diploma, or employment passes, which are granted to graduates.

They are not complaining, because the job they have and the money it brings are much better than being jobless back home.

For example, Eric Dellosa, 38, is an electrical engineering graduate who is serving up cups of teh-O, kopi and Milo Dinosaur at a Holland Village coffee shop.

AN OFFICIAL of the Philippine Retirement Authority (PRA) said the number of Korean retirees who prefer to invest and reside in the Philippines has increased in the last three years.

Noehl Bautista, officer-in-charge of the Servicing Division of the Resident Retirees Servicing Center of the PRA, said that for the last three years, the number of Korean retirees increased by 20 percent.

Bautista said PRA now has a total of 18,000 principal retirees. Most of them, she said, are Chinese, which share about 60 percent of the total retiree population, followed by Taiwanese, Koreans, and Japanese.

MANILA, Philippines: Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's public support rating plunged last month to a record low, making her the country's most unpopular president since democracy was restored in 1986, a survey showed Friday.

The independent Social Weather Stations survey found that 22 percent of Filipinos were satisfied and 60 percent dissatisfied with Arroyo's performance.

The net satisfaction rating — the difference between those satisfied and dissatisfied — plunged to negative 38 points from negative 26 in March.

The rating was the lowest for any Philippine president since 1986, when Corazon Aquino restored democracy after leading a popular "people power" revolt that toppled longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Up to 10,000 Filipinos are ignoring a Philippine government ban on working in Iraq, a recruiting company consultant said Thursday.

The Filipinos enter Iraq via Dubai and Kuwait, many to work at US military bases including camps Anaconda and Victory, said Emmanuel Geslani of Anglo-European Services Inc., a leading employer of Filipinos in Iraq.

President Gloria Arroyo banned Filipinos working in Iraq in July, 2004 after a Filipino truck driver was kidnapped there.

The driver was freed unharmed after Manila pulled out its token military contribution to the coalition forces and some 4,500 Filipinos working in Iraq at the time were allowed to work out their contracts.

Four-time world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao may have suffered a big blow in his first attempt to join politics in 2007, but this fighter is not just going to throw in the towel without trying again.

Pacquiao, the Filipino boxing icon who does not easily give up a fight, is eyeing politics for the second time so he can further serve the public.

He confirmed his plan to run for public office in the 2010 national elections as he undertook typhoon relief operations in the provinces.

Singapore may be one of the world's most successful economies, but when it comes to human rights, it gets a failing grade, says a new report by the International Bar Association Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI).

IBAHRI says Singapore falls "far short of international standards" in the area of human rights, especially with its severe limitations on the freedoms of expression, assembly and the press, and of the independence of the judiciary.

According to the report, "Prosperity Versus Individual Rights? Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law in Singapore", "democratic debate and media comment are extremely restricted and government officials have initiated numerous successful defamation suits against both political and media critics."

Pinoys in Belgium are overwhelmed that four of the most beautiful places in the Philippines are still in the top 10 of the 77 nominees vying to be included in the New 7 Wonders of Nature.

As of this posting, Tubbataha Reef found in Sulu Sea is fourth, followed by Bohol's Chocolate Hills in fifth spot. The Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park in Palawan remains strong at sixth while Mayon Volcano in Bicol is ninth.

Voting for the top 77 nominees will be up to end of December 2008. Of these nominees, Dr. Federico Mayor, former director of United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and other experts will choose and visit the 21 finalists. In mid-2010, the New 7 Wonders of Nature will be named.

An anti-child pornography network staged Tuesday a walk for unity against child pornography.

The alliance is composed of various groups committed to anti-pornography advocacy, including Caritas Manila, Council for the Welfare of Children, United Nations Children's Fund, Philippine Women's University, and Optical Media Board.

The alliance believed that child pornography is a growing problem given the widespread access to the Internet, cell phone video, pirated DVDs, and pornographic cartoons. They also included, among their activities, a petition-signing campaign.

We Filipinos are inventive, ingenious and creative. Artistry beats in our hearts. You see that in the ease with which we excel in music and the arts, storming the world with prodigious expressions of it... And lest we forget, we invented EDSA People Power.

Yet, we Filipinos are also sly, manipulative and destructive, employing our very inventiveness, ingenuity and creativity for that purpose. We are a country full of lawyers, and yet we are one of the most lawless countries in the world, our lawyers using the law to defeat the law. Can you find any more destructive use of the law than the creative ways with which Jose de Venecia’s cohorts (he led them then) invoked the majesty of the law to trash the impeachment bids against a usurper?

We invented EDSA People Power, yet the same EDSA People Power became the very instrument for bringing back a dictatorship to us. We claim to be the most democratic country in Asia, yet we are the least of it to have distributed the national wealth or to allow the citizens to take part in their governance. Erring drivers give traffic cops the most inventive explanations for violating traffic rules; erring cops give the public the most ingenious excuses for not making traffic flow; Bayani Fernando gives the most creative reasons for putting up campaign posters on the EDSA highway; the Supreme Court offers the cleverest ruses for not allowing Romulo Neri to implicate his boss. Everywhere in the country we have fixers of all shapes and sizes to help us cut corners, get ahead of the line, “bahala na” those who are left behind.

We all wear the face of the “Barefaced Contessa”— some more than others.

Why are we poor? More than ten years ago, James Fallows, editor of the Atlantic Monthly came to the Philippines and wrote about our “damaged culture” which, he asserted, impeded our development.

We are poor because our people are lazy. I pass by a slum area every morning - dozens of adults do nothing but idle, gossip and drink. We do not save. Look at the Japanese and how they save in spite of the fact that the interest given them by their banks is so little. They work very hard too.

We are great show-offs. Look at our women, how overdressed, over-coiffed they are, and Imelda epitomizes that extravagance. Look at our men, their manicured nails, their personal jewelry, their diamond rings. Yabang - that is what we are, and all that money expended on status symbols, on yabang.

We did not pursue agrarian reform like Japan and Taiwan. It is not so much the development of the rural sector, making it productive and a good market as well. Agrarian reform releases the energies of the landlords who, before the reform, merely waited for the harvest. They become entrepreneurs, the harbingers of change. Our nationalist icons like Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo Tañada opposed agrarian reform, the single most important factor that would have altered the rural areas and lifted the peasant from poverty. Both of them were merely anti-American.

And finally, we are poor because we have lost our ethical moorings. We condone cronyism and corruption and we don't ostracize or punish the crooks in our midst. Both cronyism and corruption are wasteful but we allow their practice because our loyalty is to family or friend, not to the larger good.

Malacañang rejected yesterday an opposition clamor for the inclusion of President Arroyo in the proposed communion ban of the Catholic Church over alleged violations of its teachings.

Amid criticisms over the President’s ineffective family planning programs, Deputy Presidential Spokesman Anthony Golez said that the government doesn’t expect anything good to come out from its critics "because of a big question on their intentions."

Earlier, the Black and White Movement, a civil society group, called on the Catholic Church to refuse communion to President Arroyo. The group said the Church should extend its ban on communion not only to pro- abortion politicians but to President Arroyo and others whom they consider to have committed mortal sins against the Church.

A Roman Catholic archbishop has ordered priests in his southern Philippine archdiocese to deny communion to pro-abortion politicians, as the country's predominant church tries to persuade the government to keep contraceptives and abortion out of people's reach.

Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, where critics accuse President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of contributing to the burgeoning population and crushing poverty by following the Roman Catholic Church's policy of emphasising natural family planning methods.

Former President Fidel Ramos, the only Protestant president, chided Arroyo last week for not having a comprehensive family planning policy due to "unwarranted subservience to the Catholic church." He said "mothers' lives and health, together with their babies, are now being put at risk for political expediency and religious narrow-mindedness."

In 2003, her husband was killed by elements of the Philippine Army under the command of then Col. Jovito Palparan, Jr. Her two daughters, one of whom is a minor, are now being held by the AFP.

Alphonse Rivera, officer-in-charge of Salinlahi (Alliance for Children’s Concerns) said that during their visits, the soldiers refused to identify themselves properly. He said that when Bayan Muna Representative Satur Ocampo tried to see the Gumanoy sisters, the latter was denied entry. He said that the soldiers also refused to provide the name of their superiors.

Rivera said that children have become victims of the Arroyo government’s counter-insurgency program Oplan Bantay Laya.

MANILA, Philippines -- The State Government of Sabah allegedly uses "illegal migrants" like Filipinos for elections and seasonal work, and then deports them when they are no longer needed, a Filipino migrant labor group leader in Malaysia said Monday.

"The deportation is seasonal because after they use the Filipinos for seasonal agricultural and logging work and for elections, they deport them," said Ambet Yuson, regional director of the Building and Wood Workers' International.

The last general elections were conducted in Malaysia on March 8. They are held every four years.

MOBILE phone users must learn to protect confidential information stored in their devices from criminals, an international security solutions provider said last week.

“It is not yet a major threat at present, but with increased connectivity and higher memory on mobile devices such as cellular phones, it is just a matter of time before criminal elements will make mobile devices their next target,” said Craig Johnston, channel manager for Asia-Pacific of Eset, an Australian solutions provider.

The latest mobile phones offer connectivity to the Internet and carry external memory of up to 8 gigabytes, which approximates the capacity of personal computers in the late 1990s.

Less than three years since she assumed the post as the country’s top graftbuster, Tanodbayan Merceditas Gutierrez has undone what her predecessor, Simeon Marcelo, has worked hard to establish: public respectability for and credibility of the Ombudsman.

At least three sources, two of them from the Ombudsman’s office, disclosed that the conviction rate of the anti-graft agency has gone down to a mere 14 percent, from a high of 77 percent last year.

“We’ve lost the momentum in the fight against graft and corruption. We’re back to the Dark Ages,” one Ombudsman insider said.